what the heck does this mean?? i have this pz3... and i hit render, it does the shadow map this, the shadow map that, then the little guy does his little dance across the progress bar. the picture renders. THEN the little guy starts doing his little dance again, and... well, he just won't quit it! ;D i tried rendering to a new window, and that popped up a render 2 window, with nothing but the background in it. and poser just locks up. and it's only this one pz3 file; think it's corrupted? in a specific spot i could check? i'm using the default settings of texture/bump/shadows (no anti-aliasing). ::sigh::

In a render with shadows you'll see the bar 1 more times than the number of lights that you have shadows active. If you have 3 lights with shadows on then you'll see the dancing guy 4 times (one for each light and then the final render). The first thing to try is render with shadows turned off. This can be turned off in the render options dialog. If the picture does render then its some sort of shadow related problem. If it doesn't render then you have either a too complex of a scene or a degenerated mesh somewhere in the. NOTE: It could very well be that without shadows you can render even though its a shadow problem. what could be happening is you're running out of ram and the shadows only exasperate the problem. More than likely its a memory issue and Poser is out requesting more memory and your OS is trying to accomidate it. Either that or its a degenrated mesh like a bad prop. In that case, try a test render and remove all props and see if it renders. From there you can weed out the culprit prop. Hope that helps.

heyas; well... technically, the little guy doesn't dance over the 'rendering shadow map for light #' bar... ;) in fact, i just discovered degenerated props, but i thought they only rendered with holes in them. drat drat drat!!!! except i made a new scene with each figure and prop thrown in, and that rendered fine. i dunno. will have to mess with it, then. thanks mason!

Interesting. I only see the little guy when the absolute final render is done.

Hmm, I remember seeing him no matter what, even on the light renders. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe that's whats happening. Maybe you had a bug before where he didn't play on the shadow renders no he's showing up. BTW you can replace that little AVI if you want.

Bloodsong, I have had something similar happen to me with corrupted files. That is if I understand what you are saying. I have had, what I call, runaway renders in which the picture renders, and then renders again, and so on, or else everything just locks up and I have to force close Poser. If this is similar to what you are experiencing, I am not exactly sure of what is going on but I have some idea of how to cause it - at least for me. If I start to render a large image, but then change my mind and decide to end it prematurely by hitting the esc key while Poser is rendering the shadows and lights, the system will often lock up and I have to force close or else it will appear to stop okay, but if I save the file it is now ( will atleast sometimes)corrupted and next time I try to render the image I get a runaway. To avoid this, I have started to wait until the little guy pops up and starts "dancing" before hitting the escape key to end the render. Maybe this is what you are experiencing. If so, I hope this helps some. Rob

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Sorry....I have no helpful advice....I just had to laugh because I loved the name of this thread! Little Guy Won't Quit Dancing.....sounds like an adult film

heyas; shadow, that sounds exactly like what's happening. drat! you don't have a fix for a file that got whacked like that? okay, no prob... i can do it over. mason, i think you have a bug, if you see the guy on the light map parts. :) papaya: lol! shush! :)

blood, if you slow your computer way down you can actually see the "dancing man" during lights etc... Most of us are running in the 250+ (and some in the 550+) range.. so it just whips by.. a simple side note.. the only time it takes a looooooong time for a render is if there's a lot of props and figures in the document.. like doing a Super Hero Conventioon... (bloody 45 minute render.... and it still came out wrong...) Cheers, Wizzard